Construcción del biodigestor

The NZC (MoE, 2007a) provides a distinct statement of the knowledge, competencies, and values deemed to be important for citizens in the 21st _century. Students are viewed as “lifelong learners who are confident and creative, connected, and actively involved” (MoE, 2007a, p. 4). The previous curriculum implemented in 1992 was the first outcomes-based curriculum that set the expectation for student know-how, performance, and achievement. The revised 2007 NZC was in response to growing social change, population diversity,

technological advancements, and vocational complexity in New Zealand (MoE, 2007a).

There are differences in the ways the learning area of mathematics have been represented in the 1992 and 2007 curriculum documents. The 1992 mathematics curriculum document articulated a constructivist approach to teaching and learning (Ell, 2001). The teaching and learning of mathematics was presented in an individual curriculum document comprising five strands: number, algebra, measure, geometry, and statistics (MoE, 1992). In 2007, the learning area was renamed Mathematics and Statistics. Mathematics and statistics are interrelated disciplines but they require different ways of thinking and problem solving. “Mathematics is the exploration and use of patterns and relationships in quantities, space, and time. Statistics is the exploration and use of patterns and relationships in data” (MoE, 2007a, p. 26). The five strands of the 1992 mathematics curriculum document were reduced to three in 2007: number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics.

The Mathematics and Statistics learning area (MoE, 2007a) emphasises the need for students to be equipped with effective mathematical abilities, skills, and dispositions. Learning mathematics should prepare students: to investigate, discover, interpret, and clarify; to create, critique, strategise, and reason; to plan, organise, and act with flexibility and accuracy; to predict, conjecture, justify, verify, and generalise; to estimate and calculate; and to reflect. These abilities, skills, and dispositions are clearly important for any students’ mathematical progress and achievement. The NZC (MoE, 2007a) also stresses the need for students to know how to communicate their mathematical thinking through their models, representations, and explanations.

The NZC (MoE, 2007a) provides subject specific directions for teaching and learning through the nine learning areas and related achievement objectives. General directions for teaching and learning are provided through the vision, principles, values, and key competencies. The vision of the NZC is the desire for New Zealand’s young people to be “confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners” (p. 7). The principles of the NZC are: “high expectations; Treaty of Waitangi; cultural diversity; inclusion; learning to learn; community

engagement; coherence; and future focus” (p. 7). Each principle provides the foundations for planning, prioritising, formalising, and reviewing the curriculum and places “students at the centre of teaching and learning” (MoE, 2007a, p. 9).

Values and key competencies provide the connections between the vision and principles. Values include: excellence; innovation, inquiry, and curiosity; diversity; equity; community and participation; ecological sustainability; integrity; and respect. The NZC (MoE, 2007a) recommends that values should be “encouraged, modelled, and explored” by teachers and students (p. 4). Students should be positioned to express, develop, and refine their values through their learning experiences and interactions with others on a daily basis.

The five interconnected key competencies are the capabilities students have for “living and learning” and include: “thinking, using language symbols and texts, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing” (MoE, 2007a, p. 12). The key competencies develop over time and “contribute to the realisation of a vision of young people who will be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners” (MoE, 2007b, p. 37). Each key competency and its significance within the mathematics curriculum are explored below.

The key competency of thinking is described as the “creative, critical, and metacognitive processes” students use to “make sense of information, experiences, and ideas” (MoE, 2007a, p. 12). It is proposed that creativity, criticality, and metacognition assist students with perceptions, comprehension, decision making, determining next steps, and knowledge construction. Intellectual curiosity is seen to be at the heart of thinking. The mathematics and statistics learning area aims to develop students’ abilities to think creatively, critically, strategically, logically, and flexibly with reasonableness (MoE, 2007a, p. 26). Students are expected to estimate structure, organise, predict, connect and carry out mathematical and statistical procedures with accuracy and confidence. When students work with and make meaning from the codes and representations through which knowledge is expressed and communicated, they are using language, and symbols and texts. Included in this key competency is an explicit link to mathematical language, and symbols and texts. Students are continuously working with language, symbols, and texts as they learn to

conjecture, argue, and justify their mathematical and statistical thinking (MoE, 2007a).

Managing self, another key competency, emphasises students knowing “when and how to act independently” (MoE, 2007a, p. 12). The ability to establish goals, plan, manage, challenge, and self-assess are integral to students’ self- management and independence. Students need to be enterprising, resourceful, reliable, resilient, and persistent. They need to be able to interact with diverse groups of people in a variety of contexts. Students manage themselves in mathematics and statistics when they are self-aware of, and strategic, about their learning. Self-managing students know “when their results are precise and when they must be interpreted with uncertainty” (MoE, 2007a, p. 26). Relating to others requires an awareness of personal influence and influences, willingness to actively listen, respect and consider different points of view, negotiate, and share ideas. The fifth key competency, participating and contributing, is about students having an active involvement in their school, home, social, cultural, or physical environments. Students are expected to contribute to the group and make connections in ways that benefit themselves and others. Participating and contributing enhances students’ sense of belonging, their confidence to participate in new contexts, and their pride in their community. The mathematics and statistics learning area emphasises the need for students to be able to communicate their thoughts, strategies, and findings (MoE, 2007a).